Why the Near Collapse of Iraq is a National SecurityThreat

ISIS, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, has now launched its newest campaign called the “March.” [See: http://www.memri.org/report/en/print8021.htm] And Iraqi Prime Minister al Maliki is offering weapons and equipment to anyone who will volunteer to fight.

Consolidating its gains over one-third of Iraqi territory, including Fallujah, Mosul, Takrit and Aleppo in Syria, ISIS now flies the Al Qaeda flag over the conquered landscape. With a half million in stolen cash from bank robberies and American-made military equipment from the Iraqi army, ISIS is less than 60 miles from Iraq’s capital city of Baghdad.

Why should you care? America’s national security is at stake.

There are about 20,000 Americans in and around the embassy in Baghdad. However, the President had indicated that things were “too politically sensitive” to send in needed military reinforcements for security and/or air transport craft to evacuate American personnel. Now that ISIS is just miles from Baghdad, the President has finally agreed to send in about 275 troops.

Jihadists have reportedly closed down possible escape routes and there are currently contractors under siege.

This all sounds eerily familiar. Former Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton reacted similarly to the idea of sending in more military support troops to safeguard American personnel in Benghazi.

Although Ambassador Stevens and others requested help, they were denied and subsequently killed.

Clearly ISIS, like Al Qaeda, is on the warpath. It has been fiercely dedicated to building up a jihadist army in the deserts of the Levant in order to establish its own Islamic state; wage war against the United States, Israel and other allied nations; and, presumably operate through cell groups inside America’s borders.

Preventing a second large-scale attack on U.S. soil from another Islamic regime where ISIS, Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups enjoy a safe haven in which to plan attacks, must be avoided.

This very dangerous scenario is made worse by the fact that after nine years of a U.S. led war, at a cost of thousands of dead and wounded American soldiers and billions of dollars, the Obama administration has failed America’s warriors.

U.S. soldiers suffered and made tremendous sacrifices on the battlefields of Iraq, particularly in Fallujah. There American and coalition fighters battled Al Qaeda, the Islamic Army of Iraq, the Mujahideen and Chechen volunteers. That operation, first initiated after the killing and mutilation of four American, Blackwater private military contractors and the killings of five American soldiers, ended in a stalemate.

And while the second Battle of Fallujah ended in victory, U.S. marines saw some of the heaviest urban combat there since Vietnam, according to the United States military.

Today, in what appears to be a recruitment video, the following clip shows a large crowd shouting Allah Akbar as the ISIS commander shouts: “We have defeated the Americans and their allies.” [See: http://www.memri.org/clip/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/4303.htm]

Indeed, Al Qaeda affiliate, ISIS, is proving to be a very effective killing machine.

Upon arrival in Mosul, ISIS’s first order of business was to burn down a large Assyrian church and perform a mass number of beheadings of the local “infidels.” Christians who survived the violent takeover must pay a special tax referred to as jizya.

President Obama has proven himself woefully inept by failing to score a win in Iraq and deliver on his promise to “responsibly end the war.” This, coupled with the general lack of leadership in Washington to win the war against Islamic terrorists, is having disastrous results.

To “responsibly end the war” in Iraq, the President needed to secure a “Status of Forces Agreement” in order to maintain a small U.S. troop presence beyond 2011. Instead, Iraqi security forces were abandoned, leaving them disorganized and ineffective.

Today, the political vacuum left by the President’s disengagement from Iraq’s leadership has been filled by Iran. With the departure of U.S. troops; ISIS, Al Qaeda and other Sunni terror groups went to war against Iraqi Shi’ites who are reportedly receiving assistance from elite Al Quds units within Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps. [See: http://abcnews.go.com/International/print?id=2875127]

Meanwhile, the U.S. is supporting rebel forces in Syria with ties to Al Qaeda and its affiliate, the Al Nusra Front, as well as the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group in Libya, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and has embraced the Taliban in so-called “peace” talks. As one former Libyan official, a legal adviser to the commander of the Libyan army’s ground forces, announced on Egyptian television: “The U.S. President and State Department never hesitate “to join hands with Al Qaeda.”

While the President operates as if he is on the side of the Islamists’ push for Islamic supremacy, U.S. counterterrorism officials note that Al Qaeda and ISIS have good organization and an excellent reach within the Sunni Arab community, forming militias that operate between Iraq and Syria.

However, ISIS’s ultimate objectives are to establish a caliphate whereby a caliph rules by Islamic law in all its severity, followed-up by attacks on the United States and the destruction of Israel.

Strategic Solutions asks if the White House understands the United States is at war. America’s enemies, groups like Al Qaeda and ISIS are not “decimated” but so empowered they are now stronger than some countries.